'Secret History of RDX'
JOHNSON CITY (Dec. 8, 2017) – A forthcoming book by a retired East Tennessee State University history professor will shed light on a Kingsport area business that employed thousands of local people during World War II.
Holston Ordance Works was constructed between 1942-44 along the Holston River in Sullivan and Hawkins counties. First managed by Tennessee Eastman Co., the “powder plant,” as it was often called, later became known as the Holston Army Ammunition Plant, operated by the U.S. Army Materiel Command, and today is operated by BAE Systems Inc. under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
In “The Secret History of RDX: The Super-Explosive that Helped Win World War II,” Dr. Colin Baxter examines the development, production and use of Composition B produced at the massive East Tennessee facility.
Baxter notes that in 1942, German submarines threatened the entire Allied war effort. After Pearl Harbor, hundreds of American ships were sunk off the East and Gulf coasts of the United States by German U-boats. Allied antisubmarine weapons were largely ineffective until the introduction of the 250-pound aerial depth charge filled with Torpex, which consisted of 42 percent RDX, 40 percent TNT and 18 percent aluminum powder.
The sugar-like RDX explosive would be mass-produced at the top-secret Holston Ordnance Works plant in East Tennessee. At long last, the Allies possessed a deadly airborne antisubmarine weapon, which helped to win the Battle of the Atlantic. RDX, code name for Research Department Explosive, was twice as powerful as TNT and the most powerful explosive in the world prior to the atomic bomb.
Baxter added that with America almost unprepared for war in 1941, “all of the armed forces – the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, Marines, Coast Guard – were desperate for steel and rubber and critical materials of all kinds, and everything needed to be done ‘yesterday.’ It hadn’t been, of course, and the demand for everything skyrocketed. Everyone wanted it now.”
Baxter noted that the production of RDX was not without controversy.
“In World War I, the primary explosive had been TNT, and you tend to go with what you have,” he explained. “And here you have civilian scientists urging a new super-explosive that hadn’t been mass-produced, and a number of ordnance people were reluctant to push RDX production. It took a number of individuals and agencies pushing very hard to get the production of RDX, and it even went to the White House and FDR (President Franklin D. Roosevelt).”
Once in production, RDX became a critical component of the war effort. It was used in the bomber war over Germany and Japan, and in the Battle of the Atlantic. In the Pacific, American submarines with torpedo warheads filled with Torpex destroyed the Japanese merchant fleet. RDX in the form of Composition B (Comp B) was also a key element in the trigger device of the atomic bomb.
“We like to think of everything being inevitable, and it wasn’t,” Baxter said. “We could’ve lost the Battle of the Atlantic, and I really believe Composition B contributed to winning that battle. I’m not going to say it’s the only thing, but it was a major contribution to giving the knockout blow to the U-boats in the Atlantic.”
Baxter, a professor emeritus and former chair of the ETSU Department of History who resides in Kingsport, drew on archival records and individuals who worked at Holston Ordnance Works during the war years in his research. In his book, he explores the history of RDX from its conceptualization in England to its mass production in Tennessee. He also examines the military significance of RDX and its impact on the lives of the ordinary Americans involved in its production.
“It made Kingsport in particular, and the surrounding towns, almost a boom region, because they were, in many ways, still in the Great Depression,” Baxter said. “Before Holston Ordnance, someone might make $1 a day during the 1930s until World War II in 1941. Then, when they were constructing Holston Ordnance, 18,000 people were employed, making 50 cents an hour plus all the overtime they could wish for. The plant itself cost over $100 million, which in today’s terms would be well over $1 billion. It was a tremendous economic boom.”
Baxter added that the construction of Holston Ordnance also changed the lives of many women in the region, as perhaps 35 to 40 percent of workers on the plant’s production line during World War II were women.
“The Secret History of RDX” will be published in May 2018 by the University Press of Kentucky. It is listed in the publisher’s spring 2018 catalog at kentuckypress.com.
In addition to “The Secret History of RDX,” Baxter’s numerous books include “The Normandy Campaign: 1944: A Selected Bibliography” and “Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1887-1976: A Selected Bibliography.”
Baxter earned his bachelor’s degree at then-East Tennessee State College in 1961, followed by his master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Georgia.